Looper
by Killbot1979
Summary: On a space station filled with the worst scum in the universe, the Doctor and his young friend Anselm have come to stop an arms deal which could alter the course of the Time War. But what awaits them is death - again, and again, and again.


Looper Craig Charlesworth CJC5100

 **Looper**

The blood – thick and rose red – ran into the overturned glass where it mingled with the remains of the stale beer that had spilled across the table. Then the whole concoction, gaseous and iron-rich, ran in rivulets to the edge of the tabletop and down, down toward the metal grille of the floor. It pooled, then drained through and headed downward once again, to who knew where. Perhaps someone in the illegal casino operating below was about to need a trip to the dry cleaners.

Then, after an exquisite pause, came the fury. The owner of the blood – Drash, as he was known to his friends – screamed obscenities in a dozen languages and rained down curses in a dozen more. He tried to stand, to lash out physically, but then realised the folly of doing so with his hand pinned to the table by a bowie knife. After a second's pause he composed himself and sat down gingerly. "So," he said in a voice dripping with honeyed sarcasm. "What can I do for you boys?"

The man who had applied the knife – young, dark and handsome in his Chancellory Guard's uniform the colour of the blood he had drawn – slapped Drash hard across the face. "When you speak to the Doctor, sir, you keep a civil tongue in your head!"

Drash spat blood and pushed the greasy black hair from his drawn, stubbled face with his one free hand. He looked at the figure in the corner, standing in the shadows beside the bar where patrons drank their drinks, spoke in their hushed whispers and did their best to notice nothing at all. The man was old – indeterminably so – but by the way he carried himself he still looked capable of doing a man an extreme physical discourtesy should the occasion arise. He wore a distressed brown leather jacket over a tight-fitting waistcoat, a herringbone scarf fastened roughly around his neck and a bandolier hanging from his shoulder. "Doctor?" smiled Drash roguishly. "I thought you'd stopped calling yourself that?"

The Doctor sniffed and spoke in a voice like honey poured over gravel. "It's true I don't much care for the name any more. But since Anselm here is a friend, and his Cousin is the Lord High President of Gallifrey, I tolerate it. I do not extend you the same courtesy."

Drash snorted derisively. "Romana? Come on, everyone know she's had it. Rassilon's coming back and then she'll be forced out of office. No, Doctor, you won't intimidate me with name dropping. Now how about you call off your pet monkey here and we talk properly?"

The Doctor pushed Anselm aside and sat at the table. He put his hand on the knife and twisted it slowly. Drash closed his eyes and shuddered slightly as he tried to absorb the pain without vocalising it. "So," he said calmly. "It's true what they say, you have changed."

"More than you know," snapped back the Doctor. "But you haven't, Drash. Still selling your weapons to the highest bidder. And we have intelligence which suggests you do business with the Daleks these days."

"Oh you have, have you? Well let me show you where you can stick your intelligence." He gestured with his hand in a manner considered so offensive it was punishable by death on at least four planets that the Doctor knew of.

The Doctor looked thoughtful for a moment and stood up. He gestured to Anselm who sat down and gripped the handle of his knife, pushing down and causing a fresh gout of blood to spurt across the table.

"Don't test me, Drash," said the Doctor. "Even in this incarnation I'm not inclined to hurt you in the way you doubtless deserve, but I'm not feeling any qualms about the idea of failing to prevent Anselm tearing that hand straight off your wrist if you don't tell me what I want to know immediately."

"And what is it you think I've done?"

"You're here to meet Colony Sarf, an agent of the Daleks and a close associate of Davros. And you're going to sell him a bomb. A very big bomb. Now, since he could be here any moment I need you to give me the device immediately."

Drash looked anxiously between the Doctor and Anselm. "And what if any of this is true? Why would I tell you? You think I want to be sitting here empty handed when Sarf gets here? You think that'll end well for me?"

The Doctor shrugged. "I don't really care what's good for you. But since you bring it up, I am authorised to offer you asylum on Gallifrey if you co-operate."

Drash laughed. "Gallifrey is losing this war. Asylum from you doesn't mean much."

"Well, that's the best offer you're getting. It's that, or Anselm takes the hand and then we start looking for other body parts you don't need."

For a moment it looked as if Drash was considering giving in. He opened and closed his mouth several times without issuing a sound, but eventually his face hardened. "You want the hand, Doctor, you take it. But I'm not telling you a damn thing."

There followed an awkward silence as both Drash and Anselm looked to the Doctor, wondering what he intended to do next. But just as the Time Lord opened his mouth to speak, the air was filled with a loud, urgent beeping. The Doctor and Anselm looked first at each other and then at Drash, who wore a look of panic. "Take the knife out!" he shrieked in panic, and instinctively the Doctor did so, tossing it aside. Hastily, Drash lifted his shirt revealing that his entire torso was a mass of plastic and metal. In the centre was a small recess containing a metal device about the size of a matchbox, unadorned except for a blinking red LED.

" _That's_ where you were hiding it?" said Anselm in amazement.

"Never mind that, you idiot, screamed Drash. "It's going to go off!"

In an instant the Doctor was at Drash's side, sonic screwdriver in hand. "How do I disarm it?" he said calmly. "Just tell me, Drash. Is it on a timer?"

Drash opened his mouth to reply but the words never came. The explosion blasted the bar, the casino, the space station on which they were based and half the planet which it circled to atoms in an instant.

"What happened?" asked Anselm in amazement. The Doctor stared at him, then at his own hands – turning them back and forth as if they would offer an explanation.

"I don't know," the Doctor replied at length. "I wonder if we're in the afterlife, but if we are then it's rather a coincidence as it appears to very closely resemble the bar we were just in."

Drash began to issue a torrent of abuse which matched in every detail that which the two Gallifreyans had already been subjected to. The Doctor looked across to the table to see the arms dealer was once more pinned to the table, the knife jutting from a ruined hand already turning black with bruising under the harsh lights of the bar. "Drash, what just happened?" he asked.

"What do you mean "What just happened"?" shrieked Drash, aghast. "Your mate just stuck a bloody great _sword_ through my hand! You think that's okay? I'll make you suffer for this, you pair of sadistic sods!"

Anselm frowned. "He doesn't remember, Doctor. He doesn't remember the bomb going off."

The Doctor cast a glance at the bar. "Look at the clock, Anselm. It's gone back by three minutes. We're back where we started."

"But how? Is this some new kind of temporal weapon?"

"No, it's just a very powerful and very dangerous but otherwise unremarkable bomb. I don't know how this has happened, but I'll bet that in three minutes, it'll be happening again."

"What are you two talking about?" said Drash. "Are you _mental_?"

The Doctor leaned over the table. "Shut up, Drash" he said curtly and tore open the shirt revealing the same mass of robotic components that they had seen before. "There's what we came for. Now you tell me, is it on a timer?"

The colour drained from Drash's face as he realised the game was up. "Look," he stuttered, "Don't lets do anything rash here. I'm sure we can cut a deal."

"I'm not interested in a deal," hissed the Doctor. "I want you to tell me how to disarm this bomb."

Panic flashed in Drash's eyes. He looked first to the Doctor and then to Anselm. "Disarm it? It's not _armed_ , Doctor. Look, listen to me, we've had run-ins before, right? You know me. I'm a naughty boy, yeah, I admit it. But I'm not suicidal! I don't give a flying toss whether you guys win this war or the Daleks. I'm not a fanatic!"

Anselm leaned over and examined the arms dealer closely. "Is he a Dalek agent? A sleeper, maybe?"

"I don't see any of the usual signs," said the Doctor. "But we can't rule it out. Listen, Drash, you _must_ have set this bomb. Do you remember? Come on, just give me something I can use."

Drash was sweating now, panic frosting his forehead. "I don't know anything! I don't, I swear!"

There followed a short period of silence before all three men became ominously aware of a loud beeping. Several of the patrons at the bar looked over curiously. "Looks like our three minutes are almost up," the Doctor sighed. He pulled the device from the chest of the horrified looking Drash and tossed it onto the table. "Dwarf star alloy casing?" he asked. "Zytron core?"

Drash nodded frantically. "Can you stop it?"

"Doctor," interrupted Anselm, "Should I start evacuating the patrons?"

"No time," said the Doctor grimly. "And there's nowhere safe within ten thousand miles anyway. No, if I can just get the casing off..."

The buzz of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver was drowned out momentarily by what the Galactic Book of Records would later credit as the third largest explosion ever recorded.

"Oh, this is getting ridiculous!" hissed the Doctor. They were back in the bar, their now-customary three minutes back on the clock. Once again, nothing seemed amiss and nobody but the Doctor and Anselm acted as if they were aware of any looming danger.

"How come nobody else knows about it?" said Anselm. "Twice these people have been blown to bits and they just sit there like nothing's happened."

The Doctor scratched his beard thoughtfully. "It's our symbiotic nuclei," he theorised. "They're keeping us in sync while everyone else has their memories overwritten. Right, let's get this sorted out once and for all." Ignoring the loud protestations from his prisoner the Doctor once again tore open his shirt and ripped the bomb from its hiding place.

"What the Hell are you doing?" demanded Drash. At a nod from the Doctor, Anselm landed a crushing blow on the criminal's nose, sending his head spiralling to the table where he lay unconscious, blowing bubbles in the slimy, congealing concoction of liquor and vital fluid.

The Doctor nodded. "Well, now I can work in peace. Thanks, Anselm."

The young soldier nodded stiffly, though he was actually secretly experiencing a sense of boyish delight at receiving praise from the very Time Lord that he had heard so many stories of from Romana in his youth. "What now?" he asked.

The Doctor grimaced. "If I can just get the casing off without setting it off... yes, there we are. Now let's see..." So saying, he placed the contents of the case on the table and began examining them by the red light of his screwdriver. To Anselm it was just a tiny bundle of wires and circuitry with a rather large ball of metal at the centre which glowed ominously.

"Can't you just cut a wire or something like they do in the holo-vids?" asked Anselm nervously.

"No," replied the Doctor distractedly. "It's rather more difficult than that. One wrong move and I'll set the thing off myself. Wait a second..."

"What is it?" asked a hushed Anselm as he peered over the Doctor's shoulder.

"There's something here that shouldn't be here. Look, it's tiny – almost microscopic – but it's not part of the bomb mechanism."

"So what is it?"

The Doctor set his screwdriver down and puffed out his cheeks in thought. "It looks like a radio transmitter... no, no wait. A radio _receiver_."

"So the bomb could be being armed remotely?"

The Doctor nodded. "Well, that would definitely account for how it's going off, but not the temporal slippage."

At that moment, the device began to emit its now familiar beep. "Almost out of time," hissed Anselm nervously. "Can you defuse it?"

"Not in time," shruged the Doctor, resignedly. "We'll just have to wait and see if providence looks after us once again."

The words had barely escaped the Doctor's lips before he, along with a billion other men and women, was vaporised in an instant.

"Here we go again," said the Doctor cheerily. He pulled the knife from the hand of Drash, who swore loudly and began cradling his injured hand in his good one. "What the bloody hell is going on? What do you two want?"

"Listen to me," said the Doctor, pulling over a chair from a nearby table and sitting on it, facing his quarry. "You have a bomb, hidden right there in your torso. Congratulations, by the way, on a very neat partial Cyberconversion. I didn't notice it at all, at first. A very clever way of concealing your wares. But I digress - it's the bomb I'm interested in, Drash. It contains a radio receiver; did you put it there?"

Drash's eyes flashed with anger. "Who's told you all this, eh? How do you know about any of it? Has someone grassed me up? Because if they have..."

The Doctor waved a hand for silence. "Drash, you told me all this yourself. I'd explain how but frankly we just don't have the time. Just answer my question – did you fit a radio receiver into the bomb?"

For a while, Drash said nothing. Then Anselm stepped forward menacingly, which was enough to loosen his tongue. "Look, I don't know anything about any radio receiver, okay? Come on, guys, there's no need for any of this!"

"You didn't modify it at all? In any way?"

"No! Why would I? I'm just a salesman, not an engineer!"

The Doctor banged his table on the fist in frustration. "Come on Drash! Your life depends on the answer!" He glanced at the clock. "You've got two minutes to help me understand why that bomb can be detonated remotely and who might want to do such a thing. Or you die."

"Wait a second," said Anselm slowly. The Doctor and Drash looked up at his handsome but faintly vacant face and he flushed. "It's probably nothing, but... where did you _get_ the bomb?"

The Doctor clapped a hand to his head. "Of course! If _you_ didn't alter the device then perhaps it was the person you bought it from! Brilliant thinking, Anselm!"

Anselm flushed with delight again. He composed himself with a cough. "So how about it, Drash? Where did you get it?"

For a moment, the Doctor thought Drash was going to refuse to co-operate, but if he'd been considering such an ill-judged move he quickly changed his mind. "I won it," he said. "In a card game on Thoros Beta."

"Who from?" snarled the Doctor.

"I don't know. I don't! I've never seen him before. Or since, come to think of it. He was just some guy. I didn't ask too many questions because... well, why would I? The bomb was worth a ton of Grotzits. No point looking a gift horse in the mouth. And then a few days later I was contacted by Sarf and he wanted to buy it."

"How did Sarf know you had it?" said Anselm, looking confused.

"Another good question," smiled the Doctor. "You're scintillating today, Anselm!"

"I..." there was a pause as Drash considered how to answer this question. The silence spoke volumes; it said, in short, "That's a good question. I never thought of that".

"Yes," said the Doctor, becoming animated as he felt himself working ever closer toward a solution. "And something else that doesn't quite sit right – why would Sarf be buying it from you anyway? He's responsible for the odd terrorist outrage on the outer planets, yes, but most of the time he works for the Daleks and Davros. If he wanted a bomb then there must be a billion of the things lying around cluttering up Skaro. Why would he come to a grotty little arms dealer like you? And to buy a bomb of the exact type you'd coincidentally just come into possession of? It all smells wrong to me."

Drash just looked flummoxed by this. His mouth hung open wordlessly as he tried in vain to piece together the nefarious plot that the Doctor was proposing. And then, with a start, he realised that his chest had begun to emit a loud electronic beep.

After the bar had been once more destroyed and miraculously restored, the barman – let's call him Syd – spat into a glass and rubbed it absent mindedly with a rag encrusted with bodily fluids of myriad kinds. Grool, one of his best customers, waved his own glass and Syd ambled over to fill it was a vile, thick black liquid from a bottle marked with a skull and crossbones. Grool shoved over a few coins and inhaled the drink in one mighty gulp. Then gestured to Syd and whispered into the large ear in the centre of the barman's forehead.

"What's going on over there? Those two look like they're having a right old tète-a-tète with Drash. I always said he'd upset the wrong people one of these days." Grool blinked his central eye firmly as if to emphasise his point.

"Looking at that uniform, I reckon they're Time Lords," whispered Syd. "The older one with the beard... well, I have my suspicions about him..."

"Ooh," said Grool. "Go on, dish dish dish!"

Syd leaned in conspiratorially. "Well, I reckon that's... the Doctor." Syd mouthed the final two words soundlessly, and Grool's three eyes all widened in surprise.

"Ooh, I _heard_ he'd gone to the bad," said Grool. He leaned hard on the bar, warming to his subject. "They say he doesn't call himself the Doctor any more. They say he's under the influence of the Sisterhood of Karn. They say he destroyed an entire Dalek fleet single-handed on the outer rim, using only a paperclip and some glue."

"Well that's hardly bad is it, blowing up Daleks? He's not a proper bad boy like you, Grool, is he? How many men is it that you've killed with your bare hands now?"

"Four thousand and eight," said Grool without a pause. "They do keep looking at me funny."

Syd shrugged. "Well you have got three eyes. And nine arms. And seven pen-"

"Hang on," said Grool. "What's he doing now?"

Syd cast a casual glance over to the corner table, determined to look as if he were doing nothing of the sort. "I dunno. He's waving that red buzzy thing around. Oh, god. I hope he doesn't find..."

"What's that thing he's pulling out of the ceiling?" asked Grool, curious. "It looks like a camera. Have you put cameras up in the bar, Syd?"

Syd shook his head. "This bar's the biggest hive of scum and villainy in this sector. I wouldn't get any business if the clientele knew they were being recorded for posterity."

"So where did that come from?"

"This guy with a funny face came in the other night. Paid me a billion Grotzits to let him install it. Promised me it wouldn't interfere with business and that he'd take it out again as soon as he'd finished what he was doing."

"So you let him?" said Grool, affronted.

"Well, you can't sniff at a billion Grotzits" said Syd matter-of-factly. "This place isn't doing the business it used to since the Time War started. Mercenaries and hit-men are our key demographic, and they tend to be very busy working at a time like this."

Grool shrugged, accepting the logic of Syd's argument. He stood and stretched all nine arms before winking with two of his eyes at the barman. "Well, I'm off to bed. What time do you finish?"

"Give it another hour and I'll close up," smiled Syd. "Keep the bed warm for me, okay?"

"Will do," smiled Grool. He mouthed the words "I love you" to Syd and turned to go, only to find the flesh blasted from his blackened bones in a millisecond.

"So what does it mean?" said Anselm, trying to screen out the loud invective being flung by Drash, which was becoming increasingly tiresome as he heard it for the fifth time.

"There's a hidden camera, right up there," said the Doctor grimly. "It all makes sense now. This was never about Drash or the bomb. Not to put too fine a point on it... it was about _me_."

"You?" replied Anselm. "What has it got to do with you?"

The Doctor flopped down onto the seat dejectedly. "They must have planned it so carefully. Drash wins the bomb in a card game, no doubt from a Dalek agent. Drash agrees to come here and sell the bomb to Sarf. The information accidentally-on-purpose leaks to the CIA and they send us to intercept the transaction. Of course it was a given that I would get the job since I've had dealings with Drash in the past and know his methods. And then once we arrive, they visually confirm on the monitor that we're here, they detonate the bomb and... no more me. This has all been one big assassination attempt."

Drash and Anselm had been listening intently. "What a load of old crap," spat Drash angrily. "I don't know what you're talking about, but you can get this knife out of my hand right now before I beat you to death with your own shoes."

This earned Drash the back of Anselm's hand. "You keep a civil tongue in your head, scum!" he shouted. "I've had just about enough of you!"

"Just about enough of me?" screamed Drash, affronted. "You've only just bloody met me!"

The Doctor shook his head. "No, Drash, he hasn't. We've been here for some considerable time now. The truth is that the bomb has already detonated, several times, but each time it goes off time rewinds back to this point and we go through these same three minutes. You just don't notice it the way we do."

Drash rolled his eyes as if he found this story ludicrous, but as he did so the Doctor detected something – just a look that flitted across the criminal's face for a fraction of a picosecond but one which spoke of a vague sense of guilt. "Drash, do you know anything about this?" asked the Doctor fiercely.

Drash shook his head vigorously. "No! What could I possibly know about time? That's your business, mate, and you're welcome to it."

The Doctor glanced at the clock. Less than a minute now before it all happened again. "Don't lie to me, Drash. Have you got something stored in that torso of yours beside the bomb?"

Drash theatrically mimed the action of zipping his mouth shut and sat back with a satisfied smile. Anselm leaned over and tore his ear off.

"Anselm," laughed the Doctor over the sound of Drash's screams. "Whatever did you do that for?"

Anselm shrugged. "It'll grow back in a few seconds."

"Very true, very true. Now Drash, if you don't want Anselm to tear off the other one, then you show me what you've been keeping hidden."

With a frantic nod, Drash lifted his shirt. There, as expected, was the bomb. But as he pushed a small hidden button, the area where his abdomen would have been rotated through 90 degrees and revealed a hidden control panel.

"What is it?" asked Anselm.

"It's a hopper," said the Doctor. "Quick and dirty time travel. And illegal, too. Very illegal. The kind of illegal that gets you a good long look at the inside of Shada if the Time Lords catch you with it. So this is what you didn't want us to find?"

Miserably, Drash nodded. He cradled his bloodied head in his hand and said, "It's hardwired into the cyberconversion. I had it done as an optional extra. Solon did the operation, it cost me a fortune. But I swear, I never meant to do any harm with it! It's just a quick means of escape if I can't get out of a sticky situation!"

The bomb began to beep. The Doctor threw up his hands in frustration. "No! Just as we were getting somewhere!" Frantically, he began to run his screwdriver over the hopper unit hoping to gather as much data as he could before the bomb finally detonated.

Once it had and things were once more back to normal, Anselm looked at the Doctor to see his mentor's face was pale white. "What is it?" he asked.

The Doctor looked once more at the screwdriver. "It's the hopper. That's what's been causing the time loop. Each time the bomb detonates it causes the quantron crystals in the hopper to overload. The reaction causes the local time distortion we're seeing. But the crystals are exhausted. Finished. The effect won't happen again. This is our last chance."

"So what can we do?"

The Doctor's face hardened. "If it were only my life in danger, I'd just let it happen. I don't care any more, I've been fighting this damn war too long to worry about what happens to me. But billions of innocent people will die. So I have to stop it."

He strode over to the shrieking, spitting, swearing form of Drash who was still livid at having his hand pinned to a table by a knife, and slapped him hard around the face.

"Morton Drash," the Doctor said calmly and authoritatively, "You're scum. Criminal scum of the worst sort. But today, you get the greatest gift I can give you. A chance to redeem yourself. You get to die saving others."

Before a dumbfounded Drash could respond, the Doctor tore his shirt open, reached for the hidden switch and revealed the hopper unit. "I know about all of it," said the Doctor, "So no denials. I know about the bomb and the illegal time travel. And I forgive you for all of it. But you've been duped – that bomb is going to go off in about a minute and a half and kill you, me and countless other people. And you can help me. You can save all of them."

Drash looked up and the Doctor saw, to his infinite surprise, tears in the man's grey eyes. "How?" asked Drash. "What do you need me to do?"

The Doctor waved his screwdriver over the unit once again. "The crystals in your hopper have been badly drained, but they might just manage one final jump. I've set the unit to take you to deep space, during Event One where you can't cause any harm. And then the bomb goes off and no one else is harmed."

Drash nodded and wiped away a tear. "I'll do it, Doctor. I'll... I'll be brave."

The Doctor put a hand on Drash's shoulder. "Thank you, Drash. I'll make sure everyone knows about your sacrifice and how brave you were at the end."

"Thanks, Drash," said Anselm, wiping away a tear of his own.

Pulling the knife from his hand and tossing it aside, Drash stood. He pointed to the large red button at the centre of the hopper unit and smiled weakly. "So I just push that button and it's all over, yeah?"

"That's right," said the Doctor, glancing at the clock. Twenty seconds to detonation.

Drash screwed up his face in concentration for a second as if making peace with himself. Then he looked up and laughed. "Nah. Not my style, Doc."

"What?"

"Look, if you're right about this bomb going off then... well. I'm not happy about dying but my Dad always told me – if you've gotta go, take as many screaming innocents out with you as you can!"

Drash threw back his head and laughed maniacally. The Doctor was rooted to the spot. The beeping noise began. Ten seconds. Five. Nothing to be done.

Nothing.

Nothing to be done.

Three seconds.

Two.

One.

Anselm threw himself across the table with a guttural roar and smashed his fist into the red button. In an instant, he and Drash disappeared together. Stunned, the Doctor turned and saw that the entire bar was staring open mouthed at him. The screwdriver slipped from his hand and he sank to his knees.

"Will you stay for another, Doctor?" asked Syd.

The Doctor swirled the remains of the creamy liquor around the tumbler and sighed deeply. "No," he said sorrowfully. He tried to stand and found his legs unwilling to comply. Was it a criminal offence to pilot a TARDIS whilst drunk? It was a moot point since he couldn't remember at the moment where he'd parked the ancient Police Box anyway.

"I really should be going. I have to tell a very dear friend that a member of her family is dead. Another victim of this ridiculous war. Another face to taunt me in my sleep." He put a hand to his head. "And don't call me the Doctor. Today of all days, I don't deserve it." With that, he forced himself to his feet and strode off unsteadily in what he hoped was the right direction.

He turned in the doorway. "Maybe keep away from here for a few days, chaps. The Daleks and their agents will no doubt be in to perform a clean-up operation once they realise the plan has failed. You don't want to be one of the things that needs cleaning. Maybe spread the word among the other residents of the station."

Grool and Syd watched the Doctor go and turned to each other. The bar was now empty except for the two of them. "Well, that was something wasn't it?" said Grool at last. "Not every day you get to meet a legend like the Doctor."

Syd shrugged. "I liked him better when he had the scarf and the jelly babies. This one's a bit... intense, isn't he?"

Grool nodded. "Maybe, but that's what war does to people. Now, are you about ready to close up?"

"Yeah," replied Syd. "Let's go home. I feel like a curry and an early night."

Grool smiled at that last bit and kissed his husband gently on the hand. Somehow this felt like it had been a really, really long night.

17


End file.
